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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27128902">longer than all the sorrow.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yui_Miyamoto/pseuds/Yui_Miyamoto'>Yui_Miyamoto</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Loveless</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Cross-Posted on LiveJournal, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:22:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,734</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27128902</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yui_Miyamoto/pseuds/Yui_Miyamoto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ritsu goes to find Soubi within the Seven Voices Academy, but is reminded of Akio…</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Agatsuma Soubi/Minami Ritsu, Chouko/Minami Ritsu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>longer than all the sorrow.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Bardvergar-san">Bardvergar-san</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Disclaimer: Loveless belongs to Kouga Yun-sensei.</b><br/>
<br/>
Time starts again<br/>
And it punctures me invisibly,<br/>
Your words in the sand<br/>
And the knives I held out to protect myself<br/>
What did you think I would say?<br/>
<br/>
Your voice rings in my head,<br/>
I can’t ever forget it<br/>
No matter how much I’ve tried,<br/>
I can’t return to that time<br/>
Even if you and I are standing next to one another.<br/>
<br/>
I still love you<br/>
Even if you don’t know it,<br/>
You would have never paid attention to me,<br/>
I was a speck in your lens,<br/>
Never a second thought.<br/>
You played with my feelings<br/>
And even if I’m angry after all these years,<br/>
You play your part<br/>
As I’ll play mine.<br/>
Give me back what was mine!<br/>
<br/>
I really can’t say that to you<br/>
because you stole nothing.<br/>
I gave it to you voluntarily.<br/>
A strawberry pushed into your mouth,<br/>
I was just a sweet you stole,<br/>
Something amusing to taste.<br/>
<br/>
I can’t forget those nights you saved me<br/>
But even now,<br/>
Years later,<br/>
I wonder why you did.<br/>
<br/>
Was this what I was destined<br/>
To live for?<br/>
<br/>
Glancing back at nothing<br/>
The hazy future<br/>
That never led towards you.<br/>
<br/>
<b>longer than all the sorrow.<br/>
By Miyamoto Yui</b><br/>
<br/>
<em>/Morning dew slipped off hazily when I first spotted it.<br/>
<br/>
Eyeing the Onaga-ageha quietly rubbing its legs on one luscious leaf, I squinted my eyes, but dared not move myself. Its dark curvy wings opening and closing nonchalantly in its elegance, I sighed. It was quiet and kept to itself though no one would be stupid enough to ignore it.<br/>
<br/>
Butterflies always captures a person’s eyes wherever they are. But they themselves do not know they’re beautiful and admired.<br/>
<br/>
It flitted away as soon as someone’s shoe tapped against the pathway, talking about classes, relationships, and next week’s quizzes. I eyed the grass spitefully, still squatting down by the bushes.<br/>
<br/>
Why must they always ruin the quietude with their mundane squawking?<br/>
<br/>
Then above the hedge, I saw</em> her<em>. Somehow among the crowd, only this woman with a labcoat had noticed the Onaga-ageha floating above the patch of pink moss./</em><br/>
<br/>
Ritsu scoffs at his own memory, eyeing the patch of uneven land with disdain. His fists open up and close and then open up again as his leather shoes quickly walk through the dirt path behind the Seven Voices Academy.<br/>
<br/>
Pushing through the branches of the thickly forested area, he goes down a small hill where he’ll eventually meet the end, a small river with a fence just a little beyond it. Once the flowing liquid is within his vision, he stops to take a deep breath and close his eyes for a brief moment. A sense of relief showers his body, but is soon replaced by that frigid armor he always wears.<br/>
<br/>
Under the gentle blanket of darkness, a boy avoids the sharp security lights to feel the cold river before him. Kneeling, he dips his hands and cups them together.<br/>
<br/>
<b>At least you can leave. I could only go so far. No matter where I’ll run, there is no place to return to.</b><br/>
<br/>
Soubi hears the crunching of grass behind him.<br/>
<br/>
Unpassionate as ever, Ritsu folds his hands behind him, coyly tilting his head while walking towards him. His movements are poised and timed.<br/>
“Soubi, I know you’ve been coming here every night. I let it go three nights in a row.”<br/>
<br/>
Nervously, the water squeezes through the crevices of his fingers. His head is still leaning forward, staring into the river. But he separates his hands and all the water splashes back, making an indistinct ripple soon erased by the flow.<br/>
“They told me I should still have my ears.” Wet fingertips touch the phantom spots where they should have been. He sniffs, but refuses to turn around.<br/>
“Feh.” Ritsu dismissively looks to one side, standing motionlessly behind him. “You’ll see that there’s a rule for everything in this world.”<br/>
“Like when you train me…” the boy answers gravely, wiping his eyes with the back of his hands and biting his lower lip.<br/>
<br/>
<b>I hate it when he sees me cry. He relishes it. </b><br/>
<br/>
“Who else will tell you the truth?”<br/>
“You’re not always honest, Sensei.”<br/>
“You should make your own truth. Otherwise, everything else will collapse if you don’t establish that.”<br/>
“What does that even mean?” Soubi looks down at his palms helplessly. “I’m supposed to follow someone else’s words, but have my own when they’re not with me?”<br/>
Ritsu then squats down beside Soubi, intensely watching his profile, his face as blank as ever.<br/>
<br/>
<em>If you’ve figured that out, then you don’t need your ears after all.</em><br/>
<br/>
“Why are you always quiet when I need you?”<br/>
<br/>
<b>Now that I need you to tell me what to do!</b><br/>
<br/>
The older man looks on as the boy’s eyes turn redder, tears forming on the eyelids and sliding down perfectly once they’ve overflowed to capacity. He reaches out his bent index finger to capture some on his knuckle, peering closely at Soubi and the tears between them.<br/>
<br/>
<em>Every day, his face shape becomes more and more like his mother’s. That carefree defiance. A paradox living in human form…</em><br/>
<br/>
The drops of water on his knuckle slip down as the boy sniffles.<br/>
<br/>
<em>To be perfection itself, you shouldn’t touch beauty at its purest form. But I never learn, do I?</em><br/>
<br/>
His knuckles gently brush on Soubi’s cheek to feel the lingering moistness. As he’s about to stand up, it’s at that moment Soubi looks up to see a momentary illusion: Ritsu gazing at him with sorrowful eyes and pursed lips.<br/>
<br/>
<b>He doesn’t look like himself.</b><br/>
<br/>
Without thinking, he innocently reaches out towards Ritsu’s face. Again, Ritsu squats down to watch him impassively, feeling the soothing fingertips against his skin. But Soubi couldn’t stop staring into those eyes, the ones that held the windows of his so-called future. Ritsu, in turn was transported to the past, for the all the lost wishes scattered to the wind when <em>she</em> left him.<br/>
<br/>
<em>The humiliation still resounds inside my bones. The unsightliness of complete submission to that emotion…Feeling everything and nothing at the same time.<br/>
<br/>
And Soubi too will lose these eyes someday.<br/>
<br/>
To become the perfect fighter, he will realize what all this is and turn away from me.</em><br/>
<br/>
Even though he’s afraid of Ritsu’s punishment, he embraces his neck anyway.<br/>
“<em>Let go</em>,” his sensei tersely commands.<br/>
“You looked like you needed it more than me.”<br/>
<br/>
Pushing him away, he stands up completely as Soubi stares up at him, gulping.<br/>
“I don’t need your sympathy.”<br/>
As he says this, he pulls Soubi’s left wrist to stand and walk along with him, never letting go until they reach the dorms.<br/>
<br/>
He doesn’t even protest when Soubi comes to his bed and touches his face while he pretends to sleep. Ritsu knows he won’t change. The personal tortures going round and round in this convoluted game…<br/>
<br/>
<em>With time, you’ll hate me. And with that anger comes its underlying passion, then you’ll never forget who I am.<br/>
That will last longer than all the sorrow.</em><br/>
<br/>
<b>#######<br/>
</b><br/>
Weeks later, when the students are at lunch, he happens to pass by Soubi’s room to find sketches on his desk, loose scraps of papers connecting into a piece-wise puzzle. They are all of different butterflies fluttering away in multiple directions. Each is so detailed he could imagine where in the premises he’d scampered off to find them.<br/>
<br/>
Lightly pressing his fingers onto the penciled forms, he starts to shake.<br/>
<br/>
<em>Even with this, he’s like her…<br/>
</em><br/>
Later on, that same night, there is a sound of whips and muffled grunts of pain, but no screaming. Spread out, Soubi feels the leather lick his back, recoiling and bending to inflict another scar.<br/>
His fingers scrape against the wooden shelf of the bookcase, closing his eyes and wanting to suffer more.<br/>
<br/>
<b>Today is different. What’s wrong with Sensei? It isn’t as painful as usual…<br/>
...but my chest hurts.</b><br/>
<br/>
He can’t control the tears slipping from the sides of his eyes.<br/>
<br/>
“Endure and you will become stronger…” Ritsu says with a determination that is rarely colored with any type of desire.<br/>
<br/>
<em>Why do we keep fighting? Whose war is it anyway? </em><br/>
<br/>
Soubi grits his teeth as Ritsu displaces himself, becoming more numb…<br/>
<br/>
<em>/”Why?” I asked as I stood at the threshold of the classroom. “Why do you always reject me?”<br/>
<br/>
Everyone had gone home and she was again fixing her papers on the desk in the front of the room.<br/>
<br/>
Tap tap tap.<br/>
“You’re used to getting everything, aren’t you? Thinking you’re better than everyone else.” She smiled mysteriously, carefully straightening out each pile into their respective files, the ring visibly glistening. Shaking her head, she glanced at the window, noticeably blocking her visage from my eyesight. “I don’t buy it. You want what everyone wants. Actually, more than anyone else here.”<br/>
“I don’t even understand what that is,” I blurted out, gripping onto the sliding door.<br/>
<br/>
Then, she carried everything into her arms and stopped next to me on her way out. Giving me a thoughtful look, she patted my head. “You are strong, but not strong enough yet.”/<br/>
<br/>
Not enough to handle true happiness.</em><br/>
<br/>
With the moonlight shining through the library, under one of its windowsills, he embraces Soubi, the wounds freshly stinging over older ones, bleeding onto the front of his blouse. He presses his chin onto the boy’s shoulder even though Soubi’s fingernails dig harshly through Ritsu’s slacks.<br/>
Hugging him closer than ever, this is the first and last time Sensei will hold him tenderly, feeling him weep with all his heart, but with no traces of it touching his skin.<br/>
<br/>
“How come when you cry, you don’t have tears, Sensei?”<br/>
<br/>
A few minutes pass in silence and slowly, he reluctantly lets go. Ritsu expects that Soubi will walk away, but instead, the boy turns around to watch him. Leaning forward with his eyes closed, Soubi kisses his cheek and hugs his sensei’s shoulders with all his might.<br/>
<br/>
Ritsu runs his fingers through the silken strands of Soubi’s long hair and stops, holding the back of his head gently.<br/>
<br/>
<em>When they’re young, even if you scold or push them away, they will love you anyway, no matter what you do. When exactly does that stop?<br/>
<br/>
I don’t want to give him away yet. </em><br/>
<br/>
<b>Owari. / The End.</b></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I dedicate this to Bardvergar-san and since you love Loveless, I made this for you. Thank you for your words. I’ve gradually tried to convert the written notebooks into comprehensible computer documents.</p><p>Don’t ask where this came from because I personally do not know. I was thinking of Soubi, but something kept saying to do Ritsu. Personally, he scares me, among other things...<br/>Then again, why should I be surprised? I always love the psychotic ones…I totally blame this on Sakurazuka Seishirou and Seta Soujirou.</p><p>The torturous beauty of Loveless reminds me of many things. It somehow parallels my undying love for Zetsuai, but I don’t want to dwell that far…I can’t handle that right now.</p><p>Love,<br/>Yui</p></blockquote></div></div>
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